For several years, the city of Bloomington, Indiana has had a pay-as-you-go trash removal system -- currently one $2 tag is required to be affixed to each trash bag or can. Recycling, however, is free. Thus, in order to keep trash fees low, residents should attempt to divert as much of their waste stream as possible to recycling.
Sounds like a great one Steve. I think that might just be a solution, provided you can keep people from counterfeiting the tags and make them recyclable as well.
Nice job of being conceptually ahead of the curve on this. The absolute key to getting the general population to change any lifestyle habits - large or small scale - is to offer tangible benefits that are understood by the everyday person on the street. There are countless ways that "recycling rewards" programs would pay for themselves
Oakland, CA has a pretty comprehensive recycling program taking plastics 1-7 along with all of the other more common items. They even provided a mini-green bin for the kitchen so you can transport kitchen waste to the large yard waste green bin. For a family of four, we usually have a 60lb cart of recyclables, a 60lb cart of yard/kitchen waste, and one half-filled tall kitchen garbage bag of mixed trash. The easier you make it, the more people will do it.
Justice Talking included a debate on this issue earlier in the year:
http://everydaytrash.wordpress.c.../26/just-trash/
Just to kick off a little chaos, I have a question to ask. How many of us do anything "green" with our old computers? We are all using one to post all of these environmentally friendly messages, so it is a fair question.
In my personal experience, every two or three years, the most used operating system gets upgraded to the point that the hardware becomes obsolete. Many of the internet service providers follow suit and require the latest OS/Browser versions for users to continue gaining access. Ergo, a lot of hardware becomes disposable.
Do any of you gut the system to recycle the steel in the chasis? Or maybe purchase a full version of the new OS and install an upgraded power supply, motherboard, graphics card, etc. in the old chasis? Or considered switching ISP's to extend the life of your old (now unsupported) operating system? Or maybe even switching operating systems?
I am not passing judgement here. I am as guilty as any in my acceptance of the marketing angle that PC's are disposable appliances. Maybe some of you have found recycling/reuse solutions.
We do have e-waste recycling here in St. Louis, and I know that's the case in other cities.
Commenting by HaloScan
